An online journal documenting the planning and building process of our modern home from start to finish. It is intended to share our experiences throughout this project with all those interested in modern design.

Finally getting time to update the blog with our recent progress. Although it took a little longer than expected, we finally closed on the 14 acre piece of property in Wisconsin. It is located about 6 miles outside the town of Black River Falls. It is a beautiful vacant lot with a half-mile dirt road leading from the paved road below to the top of a 150ft tall cliff with clear views of the entire eastern horizon overlooking the Black River valley.

We spent several days there in July clearing brush and surveying the property. It took about an entire day to to clear the fallen trees on the road and mow down the tall weeds that had grown up on the road and clearing at the top. Anne's dad and brother really worked hard to help us get it done. We then spent the next three days topo surveying the entire 14 acres from top to bottom. You would never know how exhausting it can be to survey such a small area until you do it. We were wiped out by the time we were done but there is no better way to get know your property than to walk up and down the entire thing. Besides the great clearing at the top (where we are going to put the house), there are some other really neat hills, valleys, clearings, and even a small pond here.

As far as wildlife, we saw several deer and wild turkeys while surveying and even saw signs that there might be bears here (from the ripped up tree trunks). There were even a few eagles flying around below the cliff - very cool! Although the ticks were no where near as bad as when we first looked at the property, we did have a few on us by the time we were done.

We are really excited to finally be moving forward again and it looks like the building restrictions are pretty minimal since it is an unincorporated area - we may even be able to put some small windmills up on the west side of the property since there seems to be a nice steady breeze on that side.

Anne is working on the data from the survey now and preparing a topo map which we should be able to post a picture of soon. Then we will start putting together a "portfolio" of ideas and design elements we like to start taking to some architects so we can get a design going.

Here is a map of where our property is. View the larger map and zoom all the way in to see a rough property line and the place where we are going to site the home.